return to the living….

Sometimes, when I am on a pity-party streak, it is just too hard to write. I even disgust myself, and despite the fact that I KNOW this is MY diary, and I’m supposed to be writing the truth in hopes of not only helping myself, but someday, maybe, helping someone else who is going through this, I just cannot bring myself to write how miserable I am.  Even when I wrote the last entry, which was sort of a "I did this today, I am doing that tomorrow", I was putting something up here so I felt like I was fulfilling some sort of obligation to people who have been incredibly kind and loving toward me, and I didn’t want ya’ll/them to worry.  But here is the truth.  Ever since my oldest son left and even some while he was here, I have been just miserable.  I have been sad and VERY, VERY, lonely.  Even in the middle of all of the kids and their friends, who are just wonderful, I missed my husband so very, very much, and when I came home it was worse.  I actually did almost literally go to bed and pull the covers up over my head for a couple of days. I just had NO desire to function, talk to anyone (it doesn’t meet that kind of lonelyness need) or really even exist. No, I’m not talking about following my husbands example, it is more just a desire to hide myself away, even from myself…if that makes any sense. 

To make sure I made myself as miserable as possilbe, I began to think about the possibility of someday meeting someone else, and when I thought about it, I simply cannot imagine how I could ever be happy with someone who doesn’t KNOW me the way that he did.  We had good times, and bad, but through it all, at the bottom of it all was this constant. Constant presence, contant knowledge that no matter what either of us did, no matter how mad either of us got, we had tried NOT being together, and that sucked worse than either of us could imagine, so the alternative was to try and figure out how to be happy together and we did. It worked for us. Or so I thought….You think you know what is going on in someones head, and then find out that you are so, so, so wrong.  I KNEW he was depressed, I KNEW he was in pain, and on some level, I was aware that he considered suicide an acceptable means out for someone who had no hope. I just didn’t realize that HE was that person.

I’m not going to dwell on this aspect, but I even thought about what it would be like to make love to someone else or actually more what it would be like to be made love to by someone else, and I simply can’t imagine how anyone else could satisfy me in that way.  He knew what made me tick and HE CARED. It is one area of our life that I can totally and completely say that he wanted MY pleasure far more than he wanted his own and I wanted his pleasure more than I wanted MY own, and consequently, we SO worked. It was an area that had slowed down over the past couple of years, but when it DID happen, it was every bit as good as it had always been.  That loss alone seems almost too much to bear.  Somebody PLEASE tell me that I’m going to come out on the otherside of this, because sometimes, it feels like it is one step forward and 10 steps back!!

I can tell you what brought on part of this. It was becoming more and more aware of how difficult this visit was for my son.  And the sad part is that I so totally understand it, but that changes nothing. In most instances, when I can understand why something is the way it is, I can either effect some sort of change, or I can better accept how it is. Not in this instance. I do understand how hard it is for this young man, who has been gone from this home for 3 years, and has made a home with his wife, as he should, for more than a year, and when he is with her and doing other things with other people who, while know about his loss, are not living it daily, can push it to the back and go on with his life. But coming here, seeing me, seeing his brother and his friends that know him so well, rather than providing comfort for him, simply make him face something that he doesn’t want to face and has managed to keep from facing, except in small bits, which makes it bearable for him.  We each have our own way of coping with this thing that has happened to us, and that is his. It is neither good, nor bad, it simply IS.  But SEEING it (and he tried really hard to hide it, but it was obvious to me and to his brother as well) made both of us feel like we were not "good" enough to meet his need…and the simple fact was that we weren’t. Not here, not now.  I’m intellectulaly sure that at some point, this will change, but it doesn’t help the hear and now. And to make matters worse? Every time I have talked to him since he left here, I can HEAR the palpable relief in his voice.  Am I happy that he sounds better? Of course I am. I’m his mother! But does it make me somehow feel terribly inadequate? (In the words of Sarah Palin…and I can’t believe I would even MAKE this joke…) you betcha! So, I can only hope that as time goes on, it will get better. Because I sure as HELL don’t think it could get much worse. 

So, although all of these thoughts and feelings are obviously still lurking around in my mind and heart, today I was busy and that makes me better. As I’ve said before, while it is unavoidable that I will visit in that place of self pity, I CANNOT live there. So, today I got up , headed up to the UCM, (our campus ministry) and helped feed 50 or so Freshman and their families lunch, passed out drinks and campus maps as parents moved their precious babies into the dorms, and watched Mom’s cry as they walked out of the dorms, and Dad’s keep tense, straight faces, while they died just a little bit inside, as they left their little girls in that wicked place called "college". We tried to make them feel a little bit easier about their being a decent place for their kids to find friends, fun and begin that process of figuring out who they are, without the constant presence of the "parent police". Now is that a realistic thing? For the most, no, it isn’t. But hey, it helps us as parents feel a little better. Hopefully, their kids will survive the stress, pressure and often down right ugliness of "the college experience". (Folks it ain’t what it used to be…) Hopefully, most of these kids will survive and maybe even thrive…but day in and day out I see a new pressure to succeed in ways that were never expected of us at the ripe old age of 18.  We had different pressures, but even with what I know, I still don’t think that the pressures were as difficult then as they are now.

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000″>This whole week will be filled with various functions that I will be helping with, so that should help, and later in the week, I have to head up to OKC, so I can go to a "corporate" store in order to jack my son’s phone upgrade from him, use my coupon for being a "long time customer" and manage to pick up a new 16 gig iphone for 99.00 bucks! I really need a new phone, I’m actually due for an upgrade in december, but my coupon will have expired by then, and my son can’t afford to buy a new phone before then anyway, and he actually quite likes his phone, so I don’t feel like I’m doing too much of a bad thing to him!  And before I know it, I will be getting on a plane and heading to Leisah’s for a few days.  I’m looking forward to that. The one thing that does seem to help, is being with people who really know me and love me anyway…and she is one of only two that fit that bill!!

Have a good "rest of the weekend" and thanks for listening/reading. I appreciate ya’ll, more than you can know…even when I can’t handle some of this life…y’all keep hanging in there with me…